About trying to live with ms and discovering that suddenly most places are inaccessible and that life as a handicapped person is very different.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Attenborough: Genesis? It can go forth and multiply

The Bible is to blame for devastation of the planet, says Sir David AttenboroughBy Steve Connor, Science editor of The Indepndent.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/attenborough-genesis-it-can-go-forth-and-multiply-1521668.html

Saturday, 31 January 2009

Sir David Attenborough yesterday blamed the Book of Genesis for all number of environment ills, from deforestation to the extinction of species He has romped with gorillas, turned his back on grizzly bears and found himself knee-deep in suffocating bat dung. After decades of getting to know the furthest-flung corners of the world – and its inhabitants – Sir David Attenborough has vented his ire on the Bible for promoting the belief that man has complete dominion over the Earth.Sir David, probably the best-loved broadcaster and certainly the most distinguished television naturalist, has blamed the Book of Genesis for many environmental problems, from the burning down of tropical rainforests to the extinction of species. On the eve of a BBC1 documentary on the life of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, Sir David has criticised the centuries-old idea running through the Judaeo-Christian tradition which assumes God gave the Earth to man to exploit and use in whatever way he saw fit in order to populate the world. Sir David, 82, said the devastation of the environment has its roots in the first words that God supposedly uttered to humankind, as detailed in Genesis 1:28: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." An atheist raised in an academic, non-religious family, Sir David said Genesis peddled untruths about how animals and plants appeared on earth and was also at the root of why there was now serious environmental degradation due to the greedy overexploitation of the earth's natural resources. "The influence of the Book of Genesis, which says the Lord God said 'go forth and multiply' to Adam and Eve and 'the natural world is there for you to dominate', [is that] you have dominion over the animals and plants of the world," Sir David said. "That basic notion, that the world is there for us and if it doesn't actually serve our purposes, it's dispensable, that has produced the devastation of vast areas of the land's surface. "Of course it's a gross oversimplification, but that's why Darwinism, and the fact of evolution, is of great importance because it is that attitude which has led to the devastation of so much, and we are in the situation that we are in," he told the science journal Nature. In tomorrow's documentary, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, Sir David does not mention the Bible directly but there is an oblique reference to its influence in his concluding statements about the important principles of evolution encapsulated by Darwin in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species. "Darwin's great insight revolutionised the way in which we see the world ... But above all Darwin has shown us that we are not apart from the natural world – we do not have dominion over it. We are subject to its laws and processes, as are all the other animals on earth to which indeed we are related." Sir David has received hate mail from viewers upset that he does not give God credit in his nature programmes and some correspondence from creationists makes him angry. "Evolution is not just a theory, as many a correspondent writes to me and says. It is a historical fact like any other historical fact and as certain as William the Conqueror landing in 1066, except it's more certain because the evidence for it comes from a much wider range of fact," Sir David said. "All we have to tell us about William are a few bits of paper here or there – not very much at all. For evolution, we have much more evidence," he said.

Catherine Pepinster, Editor, The Tablet

David Attenborough is right to talk about the influence of the Book of Genesis on our relationship with the rest of creation, for the first book of the Bible is the foundation of the theological account of humanity's relationship with the land. It is a story of the struggle for survival, of a people for whom the desert was very close and very threatening.

But the idea that you survive by treating the world as if it is dispensable and only there for our purposes is to misunderstand was is meant in scripture by "dominion". If you go back to the roots of that term you find that it means a kingly rule of the kind bestowed by the shepherd-king David. It means rule in God's image, a pastoral rule of great care. In other words, stewardship.

Stewardship means responsibility. It means acting like Noah to preserve the animals threatened with flood. Increasing numbers of Christians today are rethinking their relationship with the environment, with God's creation. This planet is not ours to use and abuse. It is to be tended, helped to blossom and to be fruitful. Otherwise we will indeed turn the world into a desert.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Thinking about the future beyond next week or next month is worrying as do not know what sort of state I will be in at the end of the year.

Already hell of a diffence with this time last year, can see that Martin, a dear and good friend who is visiting, finds it difficult to deal with me being in bed and needing so much help.

Though he tries not to show it we can see that its not easy for him, but despite that he manages to handle it all very well.

Treats me just the same as always which is very appreciated by us both.

Martin was here last year when we could go down the Ten Cate market together, me with the electric handbike attachment on the wheelchair which was good.

This year I am in bed struggling to feed myself, my hands getting useless, very hard to manipulate things with them and huge loss of strength in my back muscles.

All worrying stuff and lots of questions such as will I ever be able to sit again after the sore has healed and even how long have I got before I can not do anything at all and before I have breathing an swallowing problems.

None of which can be answered will just have to wait and see and do my best to keep as fit as possible and as positive and enjoy everything I can.

Bloody hard and can't cope without crying every day or so especially today after seeing photos from 1984 and 1987 that a very dear friend sent me today.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The nurse came by with the doctor from the Rehabilitation Centre today.

It's good the doctors from the Rehabilitation Centre Amsterdam come by regularly to check the healing process is going well.

The good news is the pressure sore is 1 cm smaller than last week, it is now down to 3 cms.

The doctor and nurse were very pleased so much so that the nurse will be coming every two weeks instead of every week from now on, he made it clear that should we need him he would be round to see us immediately.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Still can't believe it but when I saw the neurologist for the MRI results in July 2006 we waited for one and a half hours and then in five minutes were told that I had primary progressive MS and not to look it up on the internet.

I should wait til the next appointment when he would give me all the information on MS. Within minutes we were back in the hall, stunned, shocked and both crying.

The neurologist had not shown a shred of sympathy or compassion nothingMonths later the same 'kindly' doctor gave me a ten years out of date book to read.

Luckily we had looked it up right away and had not waited for the doc to tell us.

Cheek of the man telling me to stay ignorant, a very unpleasant man who was publically even nasty to his own colleagues.

Luckily I was sent to another hospital for a second opinion, finally saw the Professorin December 2006 and got sent for another set of MRI's in March 2007 they were not ok and had to redone finally happened in June and after various hitches the good Professor told me in the autumn that I had abit of MS abit?!

I could not walk and already needed carers to wash and dress me and help me go to the toilet. A bit of MS!!!!!!

In January 2008 saw the Professor for the last time he was obviously not a happy man as he could tell me nothing about the course of my MS.

Then I had to see the first neuro again last April, by then I was fulltime in a wheelchair and he actually asked me how I had managed to get into a wheelchair so quickly!

Don't see any neurologists anymore as there are no drugs for me and they can't make a diagnosis something that makes them nervous and unhappy.

My GP is good which is a bonus, she is very supportive of me and Richie and it's good to be able to talk with her.

And Richie looks after me wonderfully well he keeps me happy despite being in bed since 21 August last year because of a nasty pressure sore.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Been very down at times and it is not surprising with something like primary progressive MS.

It is very strange to lose so much so quickly at the beginning it really shook me and made me feel useless.

Could not bear to look at myself.

Realised that I was feeling useless because that is how it is seen in the capitalist system, you are either able to work and therefore useful or you are unable to work and seen as useless.

Not being able to work really shook me and my self image became distorted into a useless, sexless handicapped thing not even a woman a nothing.

That was how I felt then a little while later when I dared to look at myself in the mirror again I saw that yes I am disabled but still me still the same spirit the same love for life and for other people.

Decided that I would have to find some of love for myself so that I did not get sucked down into depression and surprisingly I managed glad I did as it has made life better.

It remains a weird thing though to contemplate that time does not stretch endlessly in front of me and that it is finite.

This is a reality for everyone but you get to contemplate this as a more immediate reality with a progressive disease such as MS.

Knowing that I do not have too long to live is a strange thought and one which makes me sad especially as I hate the idea of saying goodbye to my darling Richie.

It's horrible but it is also good as it helps me to really make the best of the here and now and enjoying my life.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Really noticing that my condition is getting worse, I am losing strength for example the muscles in my back are really weak as I have been lying in bed since 21st August.

My back is getting so weak that I find myself slumping forwards after have sat for a wee while in front of the exercise machine plus finding some simple things more difficult these days.

Some days find typing with my one usable finger is really difficult one minute it is ok and then I can't click on anything say open my mail or just sending a mail or copying and pasting or just clicking on a mail to open and read.

And eating is horribly frustrating as I can't sit up enough and eating in a slumped position is difficult plus holding the fork/spoon or cup is often very difficult.

These days I am also in constant discomfort and pain which really wears me down, try my best to remain positive but sometimes it's not easy.

My big problem is that in my desire to remain positive I do not acknowledge what is happening plus in my desire to not only be positive but in order not to burden others with all the details of the progression of the MS I hardly say anything about what is happening.

Really weird way to behave and does not protect anyone, realise too that have been keeping lots to myself so have not talked about the fact that I know that my condition is deteriorating which means that I won't be alive for as long as I had hoped and that is strange to think about and to contemplate dying sooner than had thought and want.

Have not talked about alot of things cos don't want to focus on them so try to forget about them guess it's the out of sight out of mind policy except that does not work well as it is constantly at the back of my mind and as soon as I start to go to sleep jumps into the front of my mind and keeps me awake.

Better to talk and write and post more and make full use of all means of communication during the day which will allow me to sleep better at night.

My belated New Year's resolution is to be more open with friends and also with myself.

Happy New Year.

Today has been a reasonable day had a few spasms in my legs one big one when the doctor visited and the the chip off my tooth and the bad news from Richie that I can't do the exercise machine everyday as sitting up in the shower chair has caused soreness and irritation in the skin around the wound.

The shower chair has a cut out bit around the bottom and the edge of the cut out bit has stressed the skin around the wound which is causing blisters and soreness and dry rough skin.

Not good so we will have to be really careful now as the wound is still healing and getting smaller though it is still quite big it's now 4cm.

It is taking a long time for the pressure sore to heal but it is now halfway healed so it's crucial that the progress is maintained.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Recently I have been thinking a lot about Trinidad, the place where I was born and where I lived with my mum and dad until I was 11.

We had a happy life there with lots of friends and family; then without warning and without any explanation, in fact they never told me we were moving for good, we left for England.

When we got there we found that it was not just colder in temperature but we also encountered racist attitudes, for me this was a huge shock as Trinidad is a wonderful multiracial island.Where people get on with each other, there are many festivals these include Carnival, Hosay, Pagwah or Holi, Divali, Eid-Ul-Fitr, Hanukkah, Corpus Christi and Easter and many more. As my dad was Trinidadian and my mum German everyday there was a different insult one day I was the German woman’s daughter and the next I was the daughter of the Pakistani.

In England in 1964 even though the 2nd World War had ended nineteen years before, the anti German sentiment was still very strong.

And the anti West Indian sentiment was pretty high too due to the rise in immigration of thousands of people from the Caribbean, who came in answer to a call for people to come over and do the work no one else wanted to do.

Dad did everything he could do to assimilate as quickly as possible, he began to wear cardigans with patches on the elbows and cavalry twill trousers and eat steak and kidney pie with HP sauce and vote for the Tories.

He tried to become in all ways more English than the English, however he fooled only himself.

So there we were in England living in a house that had no visitors, no friends and family popping in as they did everyday in Port of Spain.

We were very isolated and the isolation was only made worse by the silence in the house and the depression that we were all experiencing.

Sadly we did not talk to each other; there was no conversation or discussion as I had seen in other peoples houses, my parents did not even really talk to each other.

They never talked to me about anything and certainly never ever asked me how I was doing, was I coping with the move.

We never talked about the future and they never encouraged me to make plans, never praised me or told me that they thought I was clever.

Often during mealtimes any talk went via me, mum would say ‘ask your father if he wants some more noodles’ and I would ask him and he would say ‘tell your mother ‘no thanks’.

Or he would say ´ask your mother if I can have some more cauliflower cheese and she would tell me ´tell your father to pass me his plate´ and he would give me his plate and she would give him a portion of cauliflower cheese and I would give the plate back to dad who might say ´thank your mother for me´.

Often these mealtimes could erupt into huge arguments about nothing much

Sometimes dad would get very angry if he thought I was given a bigger piece of meat than him.

Mealtimes like that were usually a sign that an argument was brewing and it was time to run away and hide, which was not an option for me as I had to at all times be with them.

They always told me that they were the only friends that I needed and did not encourage me to make new friends. In fact they discouraged it.

We were all isolated in our own problems and by not talking about how the move had affected us we were left stuck there each in their own private misery.

The result was my father took out his frustrations and his disappointment at the failure of the move and his crappy job and lack of any chance of a better job on us and was hitting us.

My mother was home all day and became seriously depressed and was secretly drinking added to that the doctor put her on valium for too long.

I was very miserable because I had no friends and worse a rotten school where the teachers were not interested in the pupils and their education and welfare.

On my first day we were all told by our class teacher that we would never amount to much and that at the best we might get jobs at Sutton Seeds or Courage’s Brewery or Huntley and Palmers biscuit factory.

What a shock considering that I was told we had moved just so I could get a good English education, but not at that school, later on I was told that it was my fault that I had not done well at school.

Nothing to do with the fact that I was taken out of school at a bad moment without there being a worked out plan, my future had been totally ruined but not by me but by my parents deciding to leave just before the important exam that would decide everything

Despite the story about crossing oceans for a good English education, which made it sound like my parents did everything they could to get me that, they decided we would leave a matter of a few weeks before the 11 plus exam.

Without that exam it meant that as we did not have money the doors to the good schools were closed to me.

The big shame of it all was that I was far from stupid as I was reading fluently by the time I was four and by the age of seven one of my favourite authors was Jane Austin.

At age eight I read the Odyssey and the Iliad and at age eleven I had read Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.

Often wonder whether going to four schools within the first two years, one in Germany and then another four in the next four years helped me any.

Plus my mum left my dad twice once in 1965 for three months and in 1966 for a year, this was extremely traumatic for all of us especially for me as she took me out of school and to Germany, it finished off any chance that I had of getting any sort of consistent education.

In 1997 I went back to Trinidad for a visit that turned out to be very important for me as it answered a lot of questions that I had since we left in 1962.

Importantly my auntie Jo told me that I was a very bright child and that my parent’s story about the good English education was just a story.

That they had left for their own reasons based on whims and pretensions but not planned, somehow they thought that they would be able to live the good life in England without money and connections.

There was no good life only a Wimpy house in Emmer Green and a large mortgage and lots of regrets and memories of better times.

Childhood memories can be sweet and even sweeter as time goes by and mine have become very sweet indeed.

Shame we did not stay in Trinidad, would have been better for me and perhaps for them too, maybe later on I would have moved but then it would have been my own choice.

I was amazed when I was in Trinidad that my memories were so accurate, just got the size wrong.

In my memory the roads were big roads, realised when I saw then again that was because I was a kid then and now as an adult I could see that they were quite small roads.

I was very pleased that I had found the correct road from the Savannah to my old home and directed my cousin straight there without any hesitation.

It was an emotional moment sitting in the car with Aileen looking up at the house that I never had expected to see again; despite the plaster being chipped it was still my dream house.

She was handing me lots of paper hankies and saying ‘well I see you are enjoying yourself’ which was a nicer approach than my mother’s who made me feel that crying was a sign that I was somehow emotionally unstable.

Aileen drove me around Port of Spain and took me to all the places I used to go it was sweet to see it all again, saw the lovely poui tree where I used to watch the beautiful stripy caterpillars.

We went to Shorelands and looked at the pool and to my old school and past where friends lived, we walked around the Savannah where we went everyday to walk our dog and ate a roti filled with alu curry.

And we drove to Maracas beach where we used to go every Sunday taking a large lunch with us, I remembered that we left early so we would get a good place to spend the day as the whole of Port of Spain seemed to be there which was very nice as we met up with friends.

The visit really clarified for me who I was and where I was from; no longer did I have all those unanswered questions as to my identity.

Felt my Trinidad roots strongly as soon as we landed and it did not take long for them to become visible to others around me as I reacted in true Trini style to the customs officer like I did.

After landing I had to queue for ages for my suitcase after about an hour or so of being sent to various counters I was informed that my suitcase was still in Barbados.

Despite this I had to queue up for a long time at the customs desk.

Finally after what seemed like centuries it was my turn, I explained that my suitcase was still at Barbados airport and would be sent on the next day.

The customs officer looked at me over his glasses and then asked me nevertheless to declare what was in my invisible suitcase at which I lost my composure.

And I let rip telling him my suitcase was in Barbados and I am here so how the hell can I declare the contents of a missing suitcase.

’I am back for the first time in thirty-five years on an important family visit and have waited hours for my case only to find that it’s lost!

I am very upset and tired and hot and really need to get out of here so that I can finally meet my family.

I am also desperately in need of a shower and change of clothes and food but no you need me to declare the contents of my missing case'!!!

Just when I started to think that I had gone to far the custom’s officer adjusted his glasses and looking over them at me again asked me ‘ why it had taken me so long to come home, darling’ !

Then he smiled at me and made a chalk mark on my invisible case and said have a good visit.

What a way to arrive back.

During my visit I started to find out more about myself and found that I am indeed emotional just like all my extended family there and all Trinidadians.

Felt totally at home there which was a glorious feeling and one that I had not had since 1962.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will askWednesday, 7 January 2009 The Independent.

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will askWednesday, 7 January 2009

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was. After covering so many mass murders by the armies of the Middle East – by Syrian troops, by Iraqi troops, by Iranian troops, by Israeli troops – I suppose cynicism should be my reaction. But Israel claims it is fighting our war against "international terror". The Israelis claim they are fighting in Gaza for us, for our Western ideals, for our security, for our safety, by our standards. And so we are also complicit in the savagery now being visited upon Gaza.I've reported the excuses the Israeli army has served up in the past for these outrages. Since they may well be reheated in the coming hours, here are some of them: that the Palestinians killed their own refugees, that the Palestinians dug up bodies from cemeteries and planted them in the ruins, that ultimately the Palestinians are to blame because they supported an armed faction, or because armed Palestinians deliberately used the innocent refugees as cover.The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel. After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah. Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused. The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range. Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise.Twelve years earlier, another Israeli helicopter attacked an ambulance carrying civilians from a neighbouring village – again after they were ordered to leave by Israel – and killed three children and two women. The Israelis claimed that a Hizbollah fighter was in the ambulance. It was untrue. I covered all these atrocities, I investigated them all, talked to the survivors. So did a number of my colleagues. Our fate, of course, was that most slanderous of libels: we were accused of being anti-Semitic.And I write the following without the slightest doubt: we'll hear all these scandalous fabrications again. We'll have the Hamas-to-blame lie – heaven knows, there is enough to blame them for without adding this crime – and we may well have the bodies-from-the-cemetery lie and we'll almost certainly have the Hamas-was-in-the-UN-school lie and we will very definitely have the anti-Semitism lie. And our leaders will huff and puff and remind the world that Hamas originally broke the ceasefire. It didn't. Israel broke it, first on 4 November when its bombardment killed six Palestinians in Gaza and again on 17 November when another bombardment killed four more Palestinians.Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer.

Monday, January 05, 2009

The 'first true scientist' By Professor Jim Al-Khalili University of Surrey

Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time. At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics,¬ or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow. Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier. For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham. Most people in the West will never have even heard of him. As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists. Modern methods Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance. But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science. Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.

Ibn-al Haytham conducted early investigations into lightIbn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method. As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data. This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science. But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first. In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist". Understanding light He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.

It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago

Prof Jim Al-Khalili

He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes. What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process. So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too. He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction. He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km. Enforced study In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics. He was given an unwelcome opportunity, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile. While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts. But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective. Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment. This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work. Planetary motion He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics. While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy. It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton. It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago. Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Christmas was very pleasant, on Christmas day three friends came round, one with her son who proudly told me he had chosen the bunch of flowers for us.

Was so lovely to see them.

Sadly did not see a wonderful friend Arden who was over here briefly from Fort Lauderdale,Miami.

Real shame it went all wrong as we were really looking forward to seeing her.

New Year's eve was very pleasantly relaxed this year, we had been playing the dogs fireworks sounds for the last couple of months in the hope that they would not bark and get really upset like as in past years.

On New Year's Richie put the dogs on his bed and they instantly became calmer and curled up and snoozed.

Which was brilliant and in total contrast to during the day when every cracker going off made them bark and run around.

Putting them on the bed made them feel very safe and they were like that at midnight when the big fireworks were set off.

The barrage lasted until two and then then it was sporadically until three thirty and then it was safe for Richie to venture out with the dogs.

A brilliant end of the year with my darling Richie, so relaxed really wonderful.